[closed] Sometimes Insomnia Is Better

[somnioergosum]

who: Ronan Lynch, Adam Parrish, and Ivar Ragnarsson
what: Ronan accidentally brings back monsters from his dreams. They really want him dead. Adam and Ivar would rather keep him alive.
when: November 18, past midnight
where: Edge of the city
warnings: Violence, major injuries, probably gore.

A nightmare was building inside of Ronan. He’d spent weeks fighting this back. Every night he didn’t bring back a night horror or mangled limbs was not a victory but it was a satisfying draw. He doubted he’d get that tonight.

Ronan waited until Adam was asleep. He slid away from him slowly. Once on his feet, he reached down and touched Adam’s head lightly. At first glance, it looked like he was blessing him, but Ronan was no saint. This was a silent request for forgiveness, known only to himself.

He grabbed a coat and a gun. The handle was composed of metal vines, which somehow gave him a good grip. The barrel of the gun had the faint imprint of leaves. It should be in an art show and not his hand, but it was the best he had.

It took him a while to get anywhere. He left his BMW behind and the Skytram only took him so far. By the time he reached the abandoned city and entered one of the old buildings, he was tired enough to fall asleep within fifteen minutes.

He dreamed of a man who looked like himself, blood streaming from his open chest cavity and trickling down his mouth. He dreamed of his father, dead beside his car. He dreamed of what had been left of his mother when the demon was finished. He dreamed of creatures as big as a man, feathers spread sparsely over its leathery, scaled body. Each face had gleaming red eyes and two beaks in the place of a mouth. Long talons reached for him. They were still on his chest when he woke.

The gun was inches away from Ronan’s hand but he lay paralyzed.

Tck-tck-tck-tck… The sound came from the night horror. Its talon hooked into his shirt and pulled. His shirt split open and blood flowed along the scratch the claw had left behind.

Ronan’s hand twitched. His finger pressed against the gun.

This time, the night horror hooked its claws into his arms.

Ronan opened his eyes and two red eyes stared back. One talon pinned his arm to the floor while the other went for his head.

He grabbed the gun and pressed it to the night horror’s stomach. He fired. One, two, three shots. If he hadn’t turned his head, the night horror’s thrashing would have ripped open his face. He shoved it off him. It lay half-shrieking, half-gasping. He stared at it as he pushed himself onto his feet. A moment later something shoved him into the wall. The gun flew out of his hand and skittered along the floor. Reeling, he struggled onto his knees.

Tck-tck-tck-tck. The sound was in front of him. Then, from the corner of the room: Tck-tck-tck-tck.

Ronan looked at both sets of red eyes and the dim outlines of the two surviving night horrors. They matched his height, around six feet, and stood upright. Their shape was vaguely humanoid but the rest of them was twisted. Their scales were as tough as leather. The thin, greasy clothes over their body served as no armor because they didn’t need it. Their many limbs reached out for him, eager to rip him apart with their claws.

He muttered a single word before they attacked again. “Fuck.”

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[ragnarsson]

Ivar took out all his rage and brutality out on the night horror. Even after it had stopped moving beneath him, he continued to hack away at it. By the time he had stopped, there wasn't much left to it but a bunch of chopped up bits and a lot of gooey fluids that had been splashed all over Ivar. He wiped the gore off of his face so that he could properly see, panting a little as the adrenaline continued to course through him.

He turned to the side so that he could see what was happening with Ronan and Adam. If Ronan died after everything he'd just done, he was going to be so pissed at him. He seemed to be alive, at least for moment. But there was still one night horror left.

With barely a second thought, he yanked one of his two axes out of what was left of the creature's head. He threw it at its back with unerring aim, letting it slam right into the spine, right by where the wing joint was at. It wouldn't finish it off, but it would definitely make it hurt.

[antietam]

Adam pressed a hand to Ronan's cheek, trying to get him to stop moving and speaking so he wouldn't bleed out quite as fast. At this point, though, nothing would keep Ronan from bleeding out.

He lifted the gun and looked to Ivar, unsurprised by all the gore. Adam had only spoken to Ivar once, but he had made his true nature very clear. If he could, he would have just carried Ronan out and left Ivar to handle the last night horror. But he knew as soon as Ronan became exposed, the night horror would lose all interest in Ivar and come after them.

He didn't care about hitting Ivar, so his shot was much more confident. It went through the night horror's middle, and Adam was fairly sure it couldn't do much more after that. He kept his gun in hand but went back to focusing on Ronan.

"I'm going to call for help. Just a little longer, stay with me." He grabbed his communicator with his other hand and set to work.

[somnioergosum]

Ronan watched numbly as the third night horror fell. Between the bullet and the axe, it didn't stand a chance. Now that it was over, he thought this would make sense, but he was only more confused. Separately, nothing about this was out of the ordinary. The night horrors, Ivar going into a frenzy, Adam coolly shooting one of them, even Ronan bleeding all over the floor, if it hadn't happened before then it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. But it felt fake, not in the way of dreams, just fake.

He felt so strange.

He opened his mouth to ask Ivar if he was alright. There had to be more blood on him than on Ronan. He couldn't tell how much, if any, was his, and then Adam spoke. That snapped him back to reality faster than anything else he could have said.

"No! They can't find them." He tried to snatch the communicator away from Adam. He lost his balance instead and that was saying something since he was already leaning against Adam.

[ragnarsson]

Just like that, the battle was over. Ivar felt his adrenaline start to recede a little bit. The injuries the night horror had given him were starting to hurt. He looked over to Ronan and Adam. The latter looked alright, the former looked like shit.

Ivar crawled back over to his wheelchair, using his axes as makeshift spikes to move across the floor a little bit faster. He got back into his chair and there was a look in his eyes that suggested he might still be in the mood for killing. As he wheeled forward, he punctuated his words with a turn of the wheels. "You are-- the absolute-- dumbest fucking person-- on this entire moon!" He punctuated this last bit as he wheeled up to them by thwacking Ronan with the axe handle. Ronan was lucky the Viking wasn't using the bladed end. He really shouldn't be smacking him around considering he's already seriously hurt, but at the same time, what's one more bruise going to hurt when Ronan has been slashed to bits?

He wasn't done. He turned to Adam, still looking furious. "And you're the second dumbest! What were you two idiots going to do if I hadn't showed up?"

What he wasn't saying was how worried he was. When Ivar was upset, he didn't tell people. Like with everything else, he got mad, using his anger to deflect what he really felt. What he was trying to say, and probably failing at, was that Ronan had scared the shit out of him by nearly dying.

[antietam]

Adam scowled at Ronan, about to start arguing with his half-dead boyfriend but then Ivar came over and refocused Adam's anger. He wasn't fast enough to stop Ivar from hitting Ronan, but he was ready by the time he was scolded. His expression was cold and he raised his gun, aiming it at Ivar's head.

"Leave us alone. You were watching him get killed when I showed up." Adam may not have been a good fighter, but he was willing to kill for his friends, and right now all he could focus on was protecting Ronan.

"I don't want to see you again. I'll take care of this." He glanced at Ronan, face stern. "Don't say a fucking word."

[somnioergosum]

Ronan was all set to yell back at Ivar, but he had to defend his friend and make sure Adam didn't get an axe to the face.

"Put the fucking gun down! He went axe murderer on my night horrors and you want to shoot him?" Ronan had already demonstrated his inability to grab something out of Adam's hands, so he pressed his cold, bloody hand to Adam's arm and slowly pushed it away. At least he tried to.

"I am not negotiating a cease-shooting-- fire-- whatever! Just stop. Everyone stop." He struggled to talk. His stomach felt like it split fqrther apart with every breath. That made sense but he couldn't explain how tight his chest felt or why beads of sweat trickled down his temples. "Jesus Mary."

[ragnarsson]

Ivar seemed completely unconcerned with the fact a handgun was being pointed directly at his face. What he did care about was his apparent shortcomings being tossed about. He glared at Adam with hatred, pointing his own blade at the other man. "Put that thing away before I put an axe so deep in your head they'll end up burying you with it."

He wasn't sure if he was quick enough to avoid a bullet to the head, but right now, Ivar wouldn't have minded a mutual kill. Vikings didn't fear death the way other cultures of the world were taught.

It was like Ivar to immediately turn on those he had just protected, his fury and bloodlust not yet satisfied. Frankly, the only thing keeping him from turning Adam into another corpse on the floor was knowing what he meant to Ronan.

[antietam]

Adam hardly seemed to listen to Ronan's demands. Mostly, he passed them off as the ravings of a half-dead man. Even Ronan's push against his arm did nothing, barely moving his arm away from the location he needed to hit to kill Ivar instantly. Adam may not have been an expert with weapons, but he knew physics and anatomy.

"A bullet is faster than your arm." He was confident that his bullet would hit before the axe and even if Ivar did land a hit on him, it wouldn't be an instantaneous kill. The fact that he was thinking about this was probably an example of how fraught his mind was.

"Go away. You're wasting time that could be spent saving his life." He tapped some buttons on his communicator and then in a softer voice to Ronan, "I'll move you away from here, okay? No one will find them."

[somnioergosum]

Ronan grit his teeth when he couldn't move Adam's arm. The strength he relied on was gone. He might not despise weaknessin everyone else, but it was unforgivable in himself. It wasn't as frustrating as Adam and Ivar ignoring him to threaten each other. It went beyond that. He was furious and too weak to do anything about it.

As anger mingled with anxiety, each breath became a struggle. His chest alternated between feeling like it would burst and collapse.

"Fuck! Will you--" Ronan shuddered as his body forcibly reminded him that yelling was a bad idea.

He clutched his stomach harder and something slid between his fingers. Let that be blood. Please let that just be blood.

Instinctively curling in on himself, he turned his face into Adam's neck. He bit his tongue to keep from screaming.

[ragnarsson]

Ivar was fully prepared to keep arguing with Adam. But upon seeing had how much pain Ronan in, he turned his attention back to his friend. He was going to have to swallow his selfish pride, as much as that galled him.

"We'll continue this later," he growled to Adam. "Make the call and get someone out here." Then he turned to Ronan as if Adam had just ceased to exist. He wasn't leaving no matter what he was told, even at gunpoint, not until he was sure the man he cared about was going to be alright.

"You sure know how to pick them." There was a definite note of jealousy in his voice, something Ronan likely wouldn't pick up on, but that Adam might. Heedless of the fact he had slash marks up and down his own arms, he examined Ronan with the practiced eye of someone who had survived more than one battle. It wasn't good, Ivar would admit. But he'd also seen men rally their strength and pull through. He prayed silently to the goddess Eir to help save him. He removed his vest, pressing it up against the marks on Ronan's stomach, which appeared to be the worst of his injuries.

[antietam]

Adam put his communicator away, having already gotten emergency services to meet them. He kept his gun out, though, since he had no reason to trust Ivar or believe he cared about Ronan's well-being in the least.

He pulled his boyfriend away from where Ivar placed his vest and carefully began carrying him out of the building as best he could. The gun was still vaguely pointed in Ivar's direction. He would have killed him or at least injured him if he wasn't sure Ronan getting upset over it would worsen his condition.

[somnioergosum]

Ronan moved his fingers. He tried to think of how to get the piece of cloth over his stomach in place of his hand, but any time he imagined pulling his hand away the image of his intestines spilling out made him reconsider.

"I-- pick them-- fine," he rasped. In different circumstances, he'd be manning the turrets and ready to launch a fierce battle in defense of his boyfriend and his fine qualities, but in those circumstances, over a quarter of his blood wasn't outside of his body. It didn't help that he was pissed at Adam for keeping his gun aimed at Ivar.

"Adam--" He scrambled when Adam tried to carry him, which he fought at first. His feet slid on blood and his knees kept buckling. Too weak to resist, he had no choice but to rely on him. "You don't-- point your gun at-- at someone unless--"

Oh, fuck. He didn't have the energy to give a lecture on gun safety now. Not to mention he thought he might throw up if he opened his mouth again.

[ragnarsson]

Sometimes, Ivar wondered if his anger was ever going to lessen. At times like this, it seemed to be the only emotion he could feel. Fury, blazing hot, both for the creatures that had tried to harm Ronan and some left over for the two idiotic men in front of him. Well, fuck both of them. Next time, Ivar just wouldn't get involved. Let's see how well they took care of such a problem on their own, trying to take care of monsters with their fists and a single gun.

He let them go, leaving him behind in the scene of the carnage. Ivar tore a strip off his shirt, tying it around his right shoulder to put some pressure on the wound. The creature's claws had sunk deep into it in an attempt to get him to drop his axe. Though he hadn't felt it at the time, Ivar's wounds were starting to catch up to him. Ronan wasn't going to be the only one spending time in the hospital. That is providing that someone could convince the proud and angry Viking warrior to even spend time in the institution.